´Snatch´: Man, All They Wanted Was to Go Buy a Trailer

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Published: January 19, 2001

Apart from its (barely) double-entendre title, "Snatch" qualifies as unusual because it's a film in which Brad Pitt's accent is better than Benicio Del Toro's. This spicy comic strip without an ounce of fat is Guy Ritchie's return to the milieu of his debut feature, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels": the London streets of guys, guns and ill-gotten gains.

"Snatch" seems almost anachronistic now, a relic of a bygone era when the Brits again ruled pop culture, when the music of Oasis was everywhere and "Trainspotting" was all the rage. (Ewen Bremner, from that film's cast, has a brief role in "Snatch.")

By bringing back actors from "Lock" and revisiting the not-so- mean streets of London, Mr. Ritchie seems to be stepping backward when he should be moving ahead. He gives this picture a little more emotional weight, but not so much that it gets in the way of its entertaining swagger.

This is "The Long Good Friday" as conceived for the men's magazine Maxim, with a special music remix; the restless soundtrack ranges from Massive Attack to Oasis to Maceo and the Macks. (Oasis has spent almost as much time in British tabloids as Mr. Ritchie, whose new Mrs., Madonna, is represented here by the song "Lucky Star.")

Mr. Ritchie seizes the bespoke machismo of British gangster movies and gives it an action picture's ferocity. The effort is hyper-real, and he plays it for comic potential. Everything clicks into place by the end, though, in what is literally a shaggy dog story, with a cast of characters with florid names.

They include Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia), who's such a legendary figure that he has an additional sobriquet, Boris the Bullet Dodger; Cousin Avi (Dennis Farina); Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones); and Franky Four Fingers (Mr. Del Toro).

Franky's hunger for — and ineptitude at — gambling explains his nickname and his injury. When you hear names like these, you wonder if Mr. Ritchie picked the pockets of Damon Runyon and Chester Gould (the creator of "Dick Tracy"), got the contents all mixed up and used them anyway.

"Snatch" follows the path of a stolen diamond through the hands, pockets and minds of a group of criminals from all walks of the lower depths: pawnbrokers, gun brokers and jewel merchants. The complicated twist of a plot mainly centers on Turkish (Jason Statham) and his pal, Tommy (Stephen Graham), a pair of small-time hoods and illegal boxing promoters who just want to buy a trailer in a misadventure that inevitably intersects with all of the other nefarious goings-on.

At a Gypsy camp, where they go to buy the trailer, they meet Mickey (Mr. Pitt), a hustler whose scams drag them into a circle that includes Brick Top (Alan Ford), a proudly bloodthirsty thug with a menacing expanse of teeth that may be the finest example of dentition in England.

Mr. Pitt shoplifts the mumbling throwaways that made Mr. Del Toro's reputation in "The Usual Suspects." It's a self-conscious device, Mr. Pitt's mockery of himself and the responses to his less-than-successful attempt at an Irish brogue in "The Devil's Own." His brio is a reminder of how adept he is at low comedy; Mr. Pitt has a scene-stealing bit close in style to his turn as a toasted stoner in "True Romance."

This is a movie figure so bored by his good looks that he wore a dress in a Rolling Stone shoot. And you have to applaud his leaping at any chance to scrawl graffiti over his gleaming iconography, which he virtually does here. When Mickey pulls off his clothes to engage in a bare-knuckle boxing match, his torso is covered with tattoos. He also receives the least glamorous introduction in movie history.

"Snatch" scurries through its paces like a con on the lam, though the film seems less pleased with itself than "Lock" and gives the actors a bit more room. This movie toys with cartoon violence and shows its repercussions, as when Tommy finds himself trapped in a nightmare in the Gypsy camp: a tear rolls down this would-be tough guy's cheek as the Stranglers' song "Golden Brown" plays for counterpoint. And Mickey has the tables turned on him in a horrific scene.

There are moments when Mr. Ritchie exploits the plot's comic and dramatic possibilities: for example, any time the magnificently ferocious Mr. Ford surfaces. Actors wait a lifetime to get material this good, and he chomps down hard on it; you can almost see the remains of Brick Top's foes between his teeth. And Mr. Jones, the soccer player Mr. Ritchie made a star in "Lock," has a fussiness that offsets his gargantuan presence.

There's no getting past Mr. Ritchie's visual trickery. This director uses punchy music-video techniques as storytelling aids, and they seem less compulsively exhibitionistic than in his debut feature. "Snatch" includes more entrances than Joan Crawford made in her entire career.

With the exception of the opening, which pokes along just so that "Snatch" can grab you by the scruff of the neck and pull you along for the rest of its 105 minutes, the picture is an explosion of graphics and jump cuts. Mr. Ritchie is maturing as a director, if not as a storyteller. Maybe next time, he'll even include women as major characters.

Written and directed by Guy Ritchie; director of photography, Tim Maurice-Jones; edited by Jon Harris; music by John Murphy; production designer, Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski; produced by Matthew Vaughn; released by Screen Gems. Running time: 105 minutes. This film is rated R.